The Past Beckons
by Aimlessly Unknown
Summary: The Doctor goes back.


Eleven goes back to see her sometimes, passing glances and strangers on a street she was never supposed to be on. As a child she remembers bow-ties that are cool and fezzes that she gave him because Mum didn't like them but they were all the rage. He tells her he's a Doctor and she tells him she hates doctors. He tells her he's better than regular doctors and she believes him.

He tells her about the planets they never saw and it breaks his hearts. Sensing his sadness she slots her little hand in his larger, cooler one and she grins at him.

He tells her "I'm so impressive" and she can't disagree because even as a child she loved him.

She told him, "I'm going to marry you one day" and he doesn't laugh. Rather, he gives her a promise that he will come back for her, he will always come back for her (except when he can't), even if he doesn't look like himself.

She swears she would recognize him anywhere.

* * *

><p>Twelve goes back and sees her in moments of his past, when Nine is taken to a separate chamber – screaming about how <em>not to touch the human<em> – and Rose is locked up alone. She will never recall the face of the Twelfth Doctor – he never shows it to her – but she knows it's him by voice alone, by cadence. He sits outside her cell – disguised as a guard, and talks to her about his current companions in the TARDIS fast asleep, she has – by now – figured out that she is gone.

He tells her how much he still misses her; how age never truly changes him even though he's, now, over one thousand years old. He tells her he married another woman – fell in love, true enough, but not nearly as much 'in love' as he is with her. She looks at him and tells him to 'get over me, Doctor'. He tells her 'no'.

With a soft smile he hears the commotion of him breaking out of his prison.

He tells her goodbye.

She promises to see him again, one day.

* * *

><p>Thirteen goes back the most. He is ginger now. He is cruel now. He tries not to be. Tries to be kind and hopeful but he isn't. He's rash and cruel; he lets planets burn because Gallifrey did and why should others survive when the Time Lords didn't? But she never knows. He never tells her because he knows she would yell at him. She knows him as a gentle man, as a man that talks to her as she works in Hendrik's. She falls in love with him all over again; they go on several dates and he tells her a secret. He tells her to trust the Doctor and she knows. Recalls from childhood.<p>

"You changed?" She asks him one day and he tries to explain it to her but she just doesn't get it – not yet. She says she still wants to marry him and he says 'not yet'.

He asks to her feign ignorance when he meets her for the first time. She still cannot grasp time but she knows to fake not knowing Nine when she sees him. It explains to the Doctor why she was so trusting, so able to know him so well.

He says that he loves her, never doubt it.

She says she never will.

* * *

><p>Fourteen only sees her once. At the end. When he is about to die for the last time he goes back, back, back to when Rose Tyler is about to be sent away. He lands inside the TARDIS – something unheard of by the laws of time and space, but his TARDIS has made an exception for itself because <em>he is dying<em>. He peers around the corner of the console room and sees her for the first – and last – time. For a moment he thinks Donna has seen him – brilliant Donna, soon-to-be gone Donna Noble makes him want to run out and hug her – but she passes it off as an illusion. Rose doesn't. She follows him into the room.

"This will be the last time, yeah?" She asks, taking one look at his weak form. He looks at her and doesn't recall watching her leave the room in his past. He really didn't pay nearly as much attention as he should have. He tells her 'yes' and she begins to cry.

He takes her in his arms, pressing kisses on her face, on her lips. She reaches up, clutching him as tightly to her as physics will allow. She tells him over and over that she loves him. He wonders if the tears are for his death or for the fact that this is her last moment with him – with stupid, selfless Ten.

He wants to run into the room and tell himself to be 'selfish'! Be selfish for once and hold her close, never let her go, but he won't. Because he wasn't meant to be happy – or so he believed then; he knows now that he deserves to be happy, and all because of her, because of his visits to her he knows. He knows now, much more than he did then.

Fourteen tells her goodbye.

She tells him she loves him, tells him she'll see him in heaven because somewhere else she's died and is waiting for him.

Rose leaves and the Fourteenth – and last – Doctor just moments before she leaves the Tenth.

And the Doctor, inside a TARDIS that is and is not his, turns to dust.


End file.
